City of Dragons

CHAPTER THREE Pathways

Thymara had lived all her life in the Rain Wilds, but she had never experienced rain like this. In her childhood in Trehaug and Cassarick, the immense trees that populated the banks of the Rain Wild River had spread their many layers of canopy and shade over those tree-house cities. The driving rains of winter had been thwarted and diverted by the infinitude of leaves between her and the sky. Of course, they had blocked the direct sunlight as well, but Thymara had felt differently about that. If she wanted sunlight, she could climb for it. She could not recall that she had ever wished to feel the full onslaught of a rain storm.

Here, she had no choice. The meadow that edged the river was not like the shadowy undergrowth of the Rain Wilds. Thick grasses grew hip- to shoulder-deep. Rather than being swampy, the earth was firm under her feet, and salted with rocks, a bewildering array of hard chunks of different textures and colours. She often wondered where they all came from and how they had come to be here. Today the wind swept across the naked lands and slapped the unimpeded rain into her face and down her collar. Her worn clothes, weakened by too-frequent contact with the acidic waters of the Rain Wild River, were no protection. Limp and soaked, they clung to her skin. And she could look forward to being cold and wet all day. She rubbed her red, chilled hands together. It was hard enough to hunt well with the battered assortment of gear she had left. Numbed hands only made it harder.

She heard Tats coming before he called to her: the wet grass slapping against his legs and his hard breathing as he ran up behind her. She did not turn to him until he breathlessly called to her, ‘Going hunting? Want some help?’

‘Why not? I could use someone to carry my kill back to the dragons.’ She didn’t mention what they both knew: that Carson didn’t like any of them hunting alone. He claimed to have seen signs of big predators, ones that might be large enough to attack a human. ‘Large game usually attracts large predators,’ he had said. ‘When you hunt, take a partner.’ It was not so much that Carson had authority over them as that he had experience.

Tats grinned at her, his teeth white in his finely-scaled face. ‘Oh. So you don’t think I’m capable of bringing down meat that you’d have to help me drag back?’

She grinned back. ‘You’re a good enough hunter, Tats. But we both know I’m better.’

‘You were born to it. Your father taught you from the time you could teeter along a tree branch. I think I’m pretty good, for someone who came to it later.’ He fell into step beside her. It was a bit awkward on the narrow trail. He bumped elbows with her as they walked, but he neither moved ahead of her nor fell back. As they entered the eaves of the forest, the meadow grasses grew shallower and then gave way to a layer of leaf mould and low-growing bushes. The trees cut the wind, for which Thymara was grateful. She bobbed her head in acceptance of Tats’s compliment.

‘You’re a lot better than when we left Trehaug. And I think you may adapt to this ground hunting faster than I will. This place is so different from home.’

‘Home,’ he said, and she could not tell if the word was bitter or sweet to him. ‘I think this is home now,’ he added, startling her.

She gave him a sideways glance as they continued to push forward through the brush. ‘Home? Forever?’

He thrust out his arm toward her and pushed up his sleeve, baring his scaled flesh. ‘I can’t imagine going back to Trehaug. Not like this. You?’

She didn’t need to flex her wings, nor look at the thick black claws she’d had since birth. ‘If acceptance means home, then Trehaug was never home for me.’

She pushed regrets and thoughts of Trehaug aside. It was time to hunt. Sintara was hungry. Today Thymara wanted to find a game trail, a fresh one they hadn’t hunted before. Until they struck one, it would be hard going. They were both breathing hard, but Tats was less winded than he would have been when they first left Trehaug. Life on the Tarman expedition had muscled and hardened all of them, she thought approvingly. And all of the keepers had grown, the boys achieving growth spurts that were almost alarming. Tats was taller now and his shoulders broader. His dragon was changing him, too. He alone of the keepers had been fully human in appearance when they had left Trehaug. Offspring of the freed slave population that had immigrated to Trehaug during the war with Chalced, his slavery as an infant had been clearly marked on his face with his former owner’s tattoo. A spider web had been flung across his left cheek, while a small running horse had been inked beside his nose. Those had changed as his dragon had begun to scale him. The tattoos were stylized designs now, scales rather than ink under skin. His dark hair and dark eyes remained the same as they had always been, but she suspected that some of his height was due to his transformation to Elderling rather than being natural growth. His fingernails gleamed as green as Fente, his ill-tempered little queen dragon. When the light struck his skin, it woke green highlights on his scaling. He was leaf shadow and pine needle, the greens of her fores … She reined in her thoughts.

‘So. You think you’ll live out your life here?’ It was a strange concept to her. She’d been at a bit of a loss since they’d achieved their goal of finding the city. When they all left Trehaug, they had signed contracts, acknowledging that their goal was to settle the dragons upriver. Finding the legendary city of Kelsingra had scarcely been mentioned. She’d taken the job to escape her old life. She’d thought no further in her plans than that. Now she ventured to picture herself living here forever. Never facing again the people who had made her an outcast.

The other half of that image was never going home again. She hadn’t liked her mother; and it had been mutual. But she had been very close to her father. Would she never see him again? Would he never know she’d achieved her goal? No, that was a ridiculous thought. Captain Leftrin was going to make a supply run back to Cassarick. Once he arrived there, the news of their find would swarm out like gnats to every ear in the Rain Wilds. Her father would soon hear of it. Would he come here to see for himself? Would she, perhaps, go home to visit him? A night ago, at the meeting, Leftrin had asked if anyone wanted to go back to the city. A silence had fallen after his query. The keepers had looked at one another. Leave their dragons? Go back to Trehaug, to return to their lives as pariahs there? No. For the others, the answer had been easy.

It had been less easy for her. There were times when she wanted to leave her dragon. Sintara was not the most endearing creature in the world. She ordered Thymara about, exposed her to danger for her own amusement, and once had nearly drowned her in the river in her haste to get a fish. Sintara had never apologized for that. The dragon was as sarcastic and cynical as she was magnificent. But even if Thymara was considering abandoning her dragon, she did not want to get back on the Tarman and go downriver. She was still sick of being on the barge and of the endless journeying in close quarters. Going back to Trehaug with Leftrin would mean leaving all her friends, and never knowing what they discovered in the Elderling city. So for now she’d stay here, to be with her friends and continue her tasks as a hunter for the dragons until Leftrin returned with fresh supplies. And after that? ‘Do you plan to live here forever?’ she asked Tats again when she realized he hadn’t answered her first question.

He replied quietly, in keeping with their soft tread through the forest. ‘Where else could we go?’ He made a small gesture at her and then at his own face. ‘Our dragons have marked us as theirs. And while Fente is making more progress toward flying than Sintara is, I don’t think either queen will be self-sufficient soon. Even if they could hunt to feed themselves, they’d still want us here with them, for grooming and companionship. We’re Elderlings now, Thymara. Elderlings have always lived alongside dragons. And this is where the dragons are staying. So, yes, I suppose I’m here for the rest of my life. Or for as long as Fente is.’

He lifted a hand and pointed silently in what he thought was a better direction. She decided to agree with him and took the lead. He spoke from behind her as they slipped single-file through the forest. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying? Are you truly considering going back to Trehaug? Do you think that’s even possible for ones like us? I know that Sintara doesn’t always treat you well. But where else can you live now? You have wings now, Thymara. I can’t see you climbing and running through the tree tops like you used to. Anywhere you go, people are going to stare at you. Or worse.’

Thymara folded her wings more tightly to her body. Then she frowned. She hadn’t been aware she was going to do that. The foreign appendages were becoming more and more a part of her. They still made her back ache and annoyed her daily when she tried to make her worn clothing fit around them. But she moved them now without focusing on the task.

‘They’re beautiful,’ Tats said as if he could hear her thoughts. ‘They’re worth anything you have to endure for them.’

‘They’re useless,’ Thymara retorted, trying not to let his compliment please her. ‘I’ll never fly. They’re like a mockery.’

‘No. You’ll never fly, but I still think they’re beautiful.’

Now his agreement that she could never fly stung more sharply than his compliment could soothe. ‘Rapskal thinks I’ll fly,’ she retorted.

Tats sighed. ‘Rapskal thinks that he and Heeby will visit the moon some day. Thymara, I think your wings would have to grow much bigger before you could fly. So big that perhaps you’d be bent over by the weight of them when you walked. Rapskal doesn’t stop to think how things really work. He is full of his wishes and dreams, now more than ever. And we both know he wants you and will say anything to you that will win your favour.’

She glanced back at him, a sour smile twisting her lips. ‘Unlike you,’ she observed.

He grinned at her, his dark eyes alight with challenge. ‘You know I want you. I’m honest about that. I’m always honest with you, Thymara. I think you should appreciate the truth from a man who respects your intelligence rather than preferring a crazy man full of wild compliments.’

‘I value your honesty,’ she said and then bit her tongue before she could remind him that he hadn’t always been so honest with her. He hadn’t told her that he was mating with Jerd. But neither had Rapskal admitted it to her. Of course, in Rapskal’s case, he hadn’t really concealed it from her. He simply hadn’t thought it all that important.

After all, most of the male keepers seemed to have enjoyed Jerd’s favours. And probably continued to, for all Thymara knew. The question came back to her. Why was it so important to her? Tats wasn’t with Jerd any more. He didn’t seem to attach any real importance to what he had done. So why did it matter so much to her?

Thymara slowed her pace. They were approaching an opening in the forest and where the trees thinned there was more light ahead. She made a motion to Tats to be quiet and slow his pace, took the best of her unsatisfactory arrows and set it to the bow. Time to move her eyes more than her body. She set her shoulder to a tree to steady her stance and began a slow survey of the forest meadow before them.

She could focus her eyes but not her unruly thoughts. Jerd had been very quick to cast off the rules of their Rain Wilds upbringing. Girls such as she and Jerd and Sylve were not allowed to take husbands. All knew that Rain Wild children who were scaled or clawed at birth would likely not grow to adulthood. They were not worth the resources it would take to raise them, for even if they lived, they seldom bore viable children. Those who tried usually died in labour, leaving the monsters that survived the births to be exposed. Husbands were forbidden to those strongly Touched by the Rain Wilds, as deeply forbidden as mating outside the marriage bed was forbidden to all Rain Wilders. But Jerd had chosen to ignore both those rules. Jerd was lovely, with her fair hair and piercing eyes and lithe body. She had chosen which keepers she wished to bed, and then picked them off one at a time like a cat at a mouse nest, and with as little compunction about the outcome of her appetite. Even when some of the youths came to blows over her, she seemed to accept it as her due. Thymara had been torn between envy for the freedom Jerd had claimed and fury at the swathe of emotional discord she cut through the company.

Eventually, she’d paid the price, one that Thymara did not like to remember. When her unlikely pregnancy ended in a premature birth, Thymara had been one of the women to attend her. She had seen the tiny body of the fish-girl before they delivered the corpse to Veras, Jerd’s dragon. It was strange to think that Thymara had taken a lesson from that, but Jerd had seemed unaffected by it. Thymara had refrained from sharing her body with any of the keepers, while Jerd continued to take her pleasure where ever she pleased. It made no sense. Some days she resented Jerd’s stupidity that could bring trouble for all of them; but more often she envied how the other girl had seized her freedom and her choices and seemed not to care what anyone else thought of her.

Freedom and choices. She could seize the one and make the other. ‘I’m staying,’ she said quietly. ‘Not for my dragon. Not even for my friends. I’m staying here for me. To make a place where I do belong.’

Tats looked over at her. ‘Not for me?’ he asked without guile.

She shook her head. ‘Honesty,’ she reminded him quietly.

He glanced away from her. ‘Well, at least you didn’t say you were staying for Rapskal.’ Then, quite suddenly, Tats made a sound, a hoarse intake of breath. A moment later Thymara whispered on a sigh, ‘I see him.’

The animal that was moving cautiously from the perimeter of the forest and into the open meadow was magnificent. Thymara was slowly becoming accustomed to the great size that the hoofed creatures of this dry forest could attain. Even so, this was the largest she had seen yet. She could have slung a sleeping net between the reaches of his two flat-pronged antlers. They were not the tree-branch-like horns she had seen on the other deer of this area. These reminded her of hands with wide-spread fingers. The creature that bore them was worthy of such a massive crown. His shoulders were massive, and a large hummock of meaty flesh rode them. He paced like a rich man strolling through a market, setting one careful foot down at a time. His large, dark eyes swept the clearing once, and then he dismissed his caution. Thymara was not surprised. What sort of predator could menace a beast of that size? She drew the bowstring taut and held her breath, but her hope was small. At best, she could probably deliver a flesh wound through that thick hide. If she injured him sufficiently or made him bleed enough, she and Tats could track him to his death place. But this would not be a clean kill for any of them.

She gritted her teeth. This could very well take all day, but the amount of meat would be well worth it. One more pace and she would have a clear shot at him.

A scarlet lightning bolt fell from the sky. The impact of the red dragon hitting the immense deer shook the earth. Thymara’s startled response was to release her arrow: it shot off in wobbly flight and struck nothing. In the same instant, there was a loud snap as the deer’s spine broke. It bellowed in agony, a sound cut short as the dragon’s jaws closed on the deer’s throat. Heeby jerked her prey off the ground and half-sheared the deer’s head from his neck. Then she dropped it before lunging in to rip an immense mouthful of skin and gut from the deer’s soft belly. She threw her head back and gulped the meat down. Dangling tendrils of gut stretched between her jaws and her prey.

‘Sweet Sa have mercy!’ Tats sighed. At his words, the dragon turned sharply toward them. Her eyes glittered with anger and spun scarlet. Blood dripped from her bared teeth.

‘Your kill,’ Tats assured her. ‘We’re leaving now.’ He seized Thymara by the upper arm and pulled her back into the shelter of the forest.

She still gripped her bow. ‘My arrow! That was the best one I had. Did you see where it went?’

‘No.’ There was a world of denial in Tats’ single word. He hadn’t seen it fly and he wasn’t interested in finding it. He pulled her deeper into the forest and then started to circle the meadow. ‘Damn her!’ he said quietly. ‘That was a lot of meat.’

‘Can’t blame her,’ Thymara pointed out. ‘She’s just doing what a dragon does.’

‘I know. She’s just doing what a dragon does, and how I wish Fente would do it also.’ He shook his head guiltily at his own words, as if shamed to find fault with his dragon. ‘But until she and Sintara get off the ground, we’re stuck with providing meat for them. So we’d best get hunting again. Ah. Here we are.’

He’d struck the game trail that had brought the big buck to the forest meadow. Reflexively, Thymara cast her gaze upward. But the trees here were not the immense giants that she was accustomed to. At home, she would have scaled a tree and then moved silently from limb to reaching limb, travelling unseen from tree to tree as she stalked the game trail. She would have hunted her prey from above. But half these trees were bare of leaves in the winter, offering no cover. Nor did the branches reach and intermingle with their neighbours as they did in her Rain Wild home. ‘We’ll have to hunt on foot, and quietly,’ Tats answered her thoughts. ‘But first, we’ll have to get away from Heeby’s kill site. Even I can smell death.’

‘Not to mention hear her,’ Thymara answered. The dragon fed noisily, crunching bones and making sounds of pleasure with each tearing bite. As they both paused, she gave a sudden snarl, like a cat playing with dead prey; a large cracking sound followed it.

‘Probably the antlers,’ Thymara said.

Tats nodded. ‘I’ve never seen a deer that big.’

‘I’ve never seen any animal that big, except dragons.’

‘Dragons aren’t animals,’ he corrected her. He was leading and she was following. They trod lightly and spoke softly.

She chuckled quietly. ‘Then what are they?’

‘Dragons. The same way that we aren’t animals. They think, they talk. If that’s what makes us not animals, then dragons are not animals, too.’

She was quiet for a time, mulling it over. She wasn’t sure she agreed. ‘Sounds like you’ve given this some thought.’

‘I have.’ He ducked low to go under an overhanging branch and she copied him. ‘Ever since Fente and I bonded. By the third night, I was wondering, what was she? She wasn’t my pet, and she wasn’t like a wild monkey or a bird. Not like the tame monkeys that a few of the pickers used to go after high fruit. And I wasn’t her pet or her servant, even if I was doing a lot of things for her. Finding her food, picking vermin away from her eyes, cleaning her wings.’

‘Are you sure you’re not her servant?’ Thymara asked with a sour smile. ‘Or her slave?’

He winced at the word and she reminded herself whom she was talking to. He’d been born a slave. His mother had been enslaved as punishment for her crimes, so when he was born, he was born a slave. He might have no memory of that servitude, for he had been a very small child when they escaped it. But he’d grown up with the marks on his face, and the knowledge that many people thought differently of him as a result.

They had come to a low stone wall, grown over with vines. Beyond it, several small huts had collapsed on their own foundations. Trees grew in and around them. Thymara eyed them thoughtfully but Tats pressed on. Ruins in the forest were too common even to comment on. If Sintara were not so hungry, Thymara would have poked around in the shells looking for anything useful. A few of the keepers had found tool parts, hammer heads, axe bits and even a knife blade in the debris of some of the collapsed huts. Some of the tools had been of Elderling make, still holding an edge after all the years. One collapsed table had held cups and the remains of broken plates. Whatever had ended Kelsingra had ended it swiftly. The inhabitants had not carried their tools and other possessions away. Who knew what she might find buried in the rubble? But her dragon’s hunger pressed on her mind like a knife at her back. She’d have to come back later when she had more time. If Sintara ever let her have time to herself.

Tats’s next words answered her question and her thoughts.

‘I’m not her slave because I don’t do those things the way a slave would do them. At first it seemed almost like she was my child or something. I took pride in making her happy and seeing how pretty I could make her. It was really satisfying to put meat or a big fish in front of her and feel how good it made her feel to eat.’

‘Glamour,’ Thymara said bitterly. ‘We all know about dragon glamour. Sintara has used it on me more than once. I find myself doing something because I think I really want to do it. Then, when I’ve finished, I realize that it wasn’t my desire at all. It was just Sintara pushing me, making me want to do whatever she wants me to do.’ Just the thought of how the big blue queen could manipulate her made her want to grind her teeth.

‘I know Sintara does that to you. I’ve seen it happen a few times. We’ll be in the middle of talking about something, something important, and suddenly you stop even looking at me and say that you have to go hunting right away.’

Thymara kept a guilty silence. She didn’t want to tell him he was mistaken, that going hunting was her best excuse for avoiding him whenever their conversations became too intense.

Tats seemed unaware of her lack of assent. ‘But Fente doesn’t do that to me. Well, hardly ever. I think she loves me, Thymara. The way she’s changing me, being so careful about it. And after I’ve fed her and groomed her, sometimes she just wants me to stay right there with her and keep her company. Because she enjoys my company. That’s something I’ve never had before. My mom was always asking the neighbours to watch me when I was little. And when she killed that man, she just took off. I still think it was an accident, that she only meant to rob him. Maybe she thought she’d just have to hide for a short time. Maybe she meant to come back for me. She never did. When she knew she was in trouble, she just ran away and left me to whatever might happen to me. But Fente wants me to be with her. Maybe she doesn’t really “love” me, but she sure wants me around.’ He gave a half shrug as he walked, as if she would think him sentimental. ‘The only other one who ever seemed to like me was your father, and even he always kept a little distance between us. I know he didn’t like me spending so much time with you.’

‘He was afraid of what our neighbours might think. Or my mother. The rules were strict, Tats. I wasn’t supposed to let anyone court me. Because it was forbidden for me to get married. Or to have any child. Or to even take a lover.’

Tats gestured in wonder at the antler scores on a tree they passed. The deer that had done it must have been just as immense as the one Heeby had just killed. She touched them with a finger. Antler scores? Or claw marks? No, she couldn’t even imagine a tree cat that large.

‘I knew his rules for you. And for a long time, I didn’t even think of you that way. I wasn’t that interested in girls then. I just envied what you had, a home and parents and a regular job and regular meals. I wished I could have it, too.’

He paused at a split in the game trail and raised an eyebrow at her.

‘Go left. It looks more travelled. Tats, my home was not as wonderful as you thought it was. My mother hated me. I shamed her.’

‘I think … well, I’m not sure she hated you. I think maybe the neighbours made her ashamed of wanting to love you. But even if she did hate you, she never left you. Or threw you out.’ He sounded almost stubborn in his insistence.

‘Except that first time when she gave me to the midwife to expose,’ Thymara pointed out bitterly. ‘My father was the one that brought me back and said he was going to give me a chance. He forced me on her.’

Tats was unconvinced. ‘And I think that’s what really shamed her. Not what you were, but that she hadn’t stood up to the midwife and said she was keeping you, claws and all.’

‘Maybe,’ Thymara replied. She didn’t want to think about it. Useless to think about it now, so far away from it in both time and place. It wasn’t as if she could go and ask her mother what she had felt. She knew her father had loved her, and she’d always hold that knowledge close. But she also knew he had agreed with the rules that said she must never have a lover or a husband, never produce a child. Every time she thought of crossing that boundary, she felt she was betraying him and what he had taught her. He had loved her. He’d given her rules to keep her safe. Could she be wiser than he was in this matter?

It seemed as if it should be her decision. Actually, yes, it was her decision. But if she decided her father was wrong, if she decided she was free to take a mate, did that somehow damage her love for him? His love for her? She knew, without doubt, that he would disapprove of her even considering such a thing.

And even at this distance, his disapproval stung. Perhaps more so because she was so far from home and alone. What would he expect of her? Would he be disappointed if he knew how much kissing and touching she’d indulged in with Tats?

He would. She shook her head and Tats glanced back at her. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Just thinking.’

But as she said it, she became aware of a rhythmic pounding. Something was running, with no effort at stealth, coming up the trail behind them.

‘What is that?’ Tats asked and then glanced at the trees nearby. She knew what he was thinking. If they had to take refuge, climbing a tree might be their best hope.

‘Two legs,’ she said abruptly, surprising even herself that she had deduced that from the sounds.

An instant later, Rapskal came into view. ‘There you are!’ he shouted merrily. ‘Heeby said you were nearby.’

He was grinning, full of joy at finding them. Full of pleasure in life itself, as he always was. Thymara could seldom look at Rapskal without returning that smile. He’d changed a great deal since they had left Trehaug. The boyishness of his face had been planed away by hardship and the approach of manhood. He’d shot up, taller than anyone should grow in a matter of months. Like her, he had been born marked by the Rain Wilds. But since their expedition had begun, he’d grown lean and lithe. His scaling was unmistakably scarlet now, to complement Heeby’s hide. His eyes had always been unusual, a very pale blue. But now the lambent blue glow that some Rain Wilders acquired with age gleamed constantly in them, and the soft blue sometimes had the hard silver bite of steel. Instead of becoming more dragonlike, the features of his face were chiselled to classical humanity: he had a straight nose, flat cheeks and his jaw had asserted itself in the last couple of months.

He met her gaze, pleased at her stare. She dropped her eyes. When had his face become so compelling?

‘We were trying to hunt,’ Tats responded irritably to Rapskal’s greeting. ‘But between you and your dragon, I suspect anything edible will have been scared out of the area.’

The smile faded slightly from Rapskal’s face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he responded sincerely. ‘I just wasn’t thinking. Heeby was so glad to find so much food and it feels so good when she’s happy and has a full belly. It made me want to be with my friends.’

‘Yes, well, Fente isn’t so fortunate. Nor Sintara. We’ve got to hunt to feed our dragons. And if Thymara had brought down that deer, instead of Heeby crashing on it, we would have had enough to give both of them a decent meal.’

Rapskal set his jaw and sounded defensive as he insisted, ‘Heeby didn’t know you were nearby until after she’d killed her meat. She wasn’t trying to take it from you.’

‘I know,’ Tats replied grumpily. ‘But all the same, between the two of you we’ve wasted half the day.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Rapskal’s voice had gone stiff. ‘I said that already.’

‘It’s all right,’ Thymara said hastily. It was unlike Rapskal to become prickly. ‘I know that you and Heeby didn’t mean to spoil our hunt.’ She gave Tats a rebuking look. Fente was just as wilful as Sintara. He should know that there would not have been anything Rapskal could have done to stop Heeby from taking the deer, even if he’d known they were stalking the same prey. The lost meat was not the main source of Tats’s irritation.

‘Well, there’s a way that you can make it up,’ Tats declared. ‘When Heeby’s finished, maybe she can make a second kill. One for our dragons.’

Rapskal stared at him. ‘When Heeby has eaten, she’ll need to sleep. And then finish off whatever is left of the meat. And, well, dragons don’t hunt or make kills for other dragons. It’s just not … just not something she’d ever do.’ At the stern look on Tats’s face, he added, ‘You know, the real problem is that your dragons don’t fly. If they would fly, they could make their own kills and I’m sure they’d love it as much as Heeby does. You need to teach them to fly.’

Tats stared at him. Sparks of anger lit his eyes. ‘Thanks for telling me the obvious, Rapskal. My dragon can’t fly.’ He rolled his eyes in exasperation. ‘That’s a real insight into the problem. So useful to know. Now, I need to go hunting.’ He turned abruptly and stalked off.

Thymara watched him go, open-mouthed. ‘Tats!’ she called. ‘Wait! You know we aren’t supposed to hunt alone!’ Then she turned back to Rapskal. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what made him so angry.’

‘Yes, you do,’ he cheerily called her on her lie. He caught up her hand and held it as he spoke on. ‘And so do I. But it doesn’t matter. You were the one I wanted to talk to anyway. Thymara, when Heeby wakes up from her gorge, do you want to go to Kelsingra? There’s something there I want to show you. Something amazing.’

‘What?’

He shook his head, his face full of mischief. ‘It’s us. That’s all I’m going to tell you. It’s us. You and me. And I can’t explain it; I just have to take you there. Please?’ He was bouncing on his toes as he spoke, incredibly pleased with himself. His grin was wide and she had to return his smile even as she reluctantly shook her head.

Kelsingra. Temptation burned hot. He would have to ask Heeby to fly her over. Riding on a dragon! Up in the air over the river. It was a terrifying yet fascinating thought.

But Kelsingra? She was not as certain about that part.

She’d been to the Elderling city exactly once and only for a few hours. The problem had been the river crossing. The river was rain-full now, swift and deep. It wandered in its wide riverbed during the summer, but now it filled it from bank to bank. A wide curve in the river meant that the current swept most swiftly and deeply right past the broken docks of ancient Kelsingra. Since they’d arrived, the Tarman had made two forays for the far shore. Each time, the current had swept the barge swiftly past the city and downriver. Each time, the liveship and his crew had battled their way back to the other side of the river and then back to the village. It had been horribly frustrating for all of them, to have come so far seeking the legendary city, and then not be able to dock there. Captain Leftrin had promised that when he returned from Cassarick he’d bring sturdy line and spikes and all else needed to create a temporary dock at Kelsingra.

But the young keepers had been unable to wait that long. Thymara and a handful of the other keepers had made the crossing once in two of the ship’s boats. It had demanded a full morning of strenuous rowing to cross the river. Even so, they had been pushed far downstream of the city’s broken stone docks and had to make their tedious way back. They’d arrived in late afternoon with only a few hours of rainy daylight left in which to explore the massive city of wide streets and tall buildings.

Thymara had always lived in a forest. That had been a strange thing to realize. She’d always thought of Trehaug as a city, a grand city at that, the largest in the Rain Wilds. But it wasn’t.

Kelsingra was a real city. The hike from the outskirts to the old city dock, portaging their boats, had proved that to her. They had left their small boats stacked there and ventured into the city. The streets were paved with stone and incredibly wide and empty of life. The buildings were made of immense blocks of black stone, much of it veined with silver. The blocks were huge and she could not imagine how they had been cut, let alone transported and lifted into place. The buildings had towered tall, not as tall as the trees of the Rain Wilds but taller than any human-created thing had a right to be. The structures were straight-sided, uncompromisingly man-made. Windows gaped above them, dark and empty. And it had been silent. The wind had whispered as it crept through the city as if fearful of waking it to life. The keepers who had made the crossing had kept to their huddle as they trudged through the streets and their voices had been muted and swallowed by that silence. Even Tats had been subdued. Davvie and Lecter had gripped hands as they walked. Harrikin had peered about as if trying to wake from a peculiar dream.

Sylve had slipped close to Thymara. ‘Do you hear that?’

‘What?’

‘Whispering. People talking.’

Thymara had listened. ‘It’s just the wind,’ she had said, and Tats had nodded. But Harrikin had stepped back and taken Sylve’s hand. ‘It’s not just the wind,’ he had asserted, and then they hadn’t spoken of it again.

They’d explored the portion of the city closest to the old docks and ventured into a few of the buildings. The structures were on a scale more suited to dragons than humans. Thymara, who had grown up in the tiny chambers of a tree-house home, had felt like an insect. The ceilings had been dim and distant in the fading afternoon light, the windows set high in the walls. Inside, there lingered the remnants of furnishings. In some, that had been no more than heaps of long-rotted wood on the floor, or a tapestry that crumbled into dangling, dusty threads at a touch. Light shone in colours through the streaked stained-glass windows, casting faded images of dragons and Elderlings on the stone floors.

In a few places, the magic of the Elderlings lingered. In one building, an interior room sprang to light when a keeper ventured into the chamber. Music, faint and uncertain, began to play, and a dusty perfume ventured out into the still air. A sound like distant laughter had twittered and then abruptly faded with the music. The group of keepers had fled back to the open air.

Tats had taken Thymara’s hand and she had been glad of that warm clasp. He had asked her quietly, ‘Do you think there’s even a chance that some Elderlings survived here? That we might meet them, or that they might be hiding and watching us?’

She’d given him a shaky smile. ‘You’re teasing me, aren’t you? To try to frighten me.’

His dark eyes had been solemn, even apprehensive. ‘No. I’m not.’ Looking around them, he had added, ‘I’m already uneasy and I’ve been trying not to think about it. I’m asking you because I’m genuinely wondering.’

She replied quickly to his unlucky words, ‘I don’t think they’re here still. At least, not in the flesh.’

His laugh had been brief. ‘And that is supposed to reassure me?’

‘No. It’s not.’ She felt decidedly nervous. ‘Where’s Rapskal?’ she had asked suddenly.

Tats had halted and looked around. The others had ranged ahead of them.

Thymara had raised her voice. ‘Where’s Rapskal?’

‘I think he went ahead,’ Alum called back to them.

Tats kept hold of her hand. ‘He’ll be fine. Come on. Let’s look around a bit more.’

They had wandered on. The emptiness of the broad plazas had been uncanny. It had seemed to her that after years of abandonment, life should have ventured back into this place. Grasses should have grown in the cracks in the paving stones. There should have been frogs in the green-slimed fountains, bird nests on building ledges and vines twining through windows. But there weren’t. Oh, there had been tiny footholds of vegetation here and there, yellow lichen caught between the fingers of a statue, moss in the cracked base of a fountain but not what there should have been. The city was too aggressively a city still, still a place for Elderlings, dragons and humans, even after all these years. The wilderness, the trees and vines and tangled vegetation that had formed the backdrop of Thymara’s life had been able to gain no foothold there. That made her feel an outsider as well.

Statues in dry fountains had stared down at them, and Thymara had felt no sense of welcome. More than once as she stared up at the carved images of Elderling women, she had wondered how her own appearance might change. They were tall and graceful creatures, with eyes of silver and copper and purple, their faces smoothly scaled. Some of their heads were crested with fleshy crowns. Elegant enamel gowns draped them, and their long slender fingers were adorned with jewelled rings. Would it be so terrible, she wondered, to become one of them? She considered Tats: his changes were not unattractive.

In one building, rows of tiered stone benches looked down at a dais. Bas reliefs of dragons and Elderlings, their mosaic colours still bright after all the years, cavorted on the walls. In that room, she had finally heard what the others were whispering about. Low, conversational voices, rising and falling. The cadence of the language was unfamiliar, and yet the meaning of the words had pushed at the edges of her mind.

‘Tats,’ she had said, more to hear her own voice than to call his name.

He had nodded abruptly. ‘Let’s go back outside.’

She had been glad to keep pace with his brisk stride as they hurried out into the fading daylight.

Some of the others had soon joined them and made a silent but mutual decision to return to the river’s edge and spend the night in a small stone hut there. It was made of ordinary river stone, and the hard-packed silt in the corners spoke of ancient floods that had inundated it. Doors and windows had long ago crumbled into dust. They had built a smouldering fire of wet driftwood in the ancient hearth, and huddled close to its warmth. It was only when the rest of their party joined them that Rapskal’s absence had become obvious.

‘We need to go back and look for him,’ she had insisted, and they had been splitting into search parties of three when he came in from the rising storm. Rain had plastered his hair to his skull and his clothing was soaked. He was shaking with cold but grinning insanely.

‘I love this city!’ he had exclaimed. ‘There’s so much to see and do here. This is where we belong. It’s where we’ve always belonged!’ He had wanted them all to go with him, back into the night to explore more. He had been baffled by their refusal, but had finally settled down next to Thymara.

The voices of wind, rain and the river’s constant roar had filled the night. From the distant hills had come wailing howls. ‘Wolves!’ Nortel had whispered and they had all shivered. Wolves were creatures of legend for them. Those sounds had almost drowned out the muttering voices. Almost. She had not slept well.

They had left Kelsingra in the next dawn. The rain had been pouring down, wind sweeping hard down the river. They had known they would battle most of the day to regain the other side. In the distance, Thymara could hear the roaring of hungry dragons. Sintara’s displeasure thundered in Thymara’s mind, and by the uneasy expression on the faces of the other keepers, she knew they were suffering similarly. They could stay in Kelsingra no longer that day. As they pulled away from the shore, Rapskal had gazed back regretfully. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said, as if he were promising the city itself. ‘I’ll be back every chance I get!’

Thanks to Heeby’s powers of flight, he had kept that promise. But Thymara hadn’t been back since that first visit. Curiosity and wariness battled in her whenever she thought of returning to the city.

‘Please. I have to show you something there!’

Rapskal’s words dragged her back to the present. ‘I can’t. I have to get meat for Sintara.’

‘Please!’ Rapskal cocked his head. His loose dark hair fell half across his eyes and he stared at her appealingly.

‘Rapskal, I can’t. She’s hungry.’ Why were the words so hard to say?

‘Well … she should be flying and hunting. Maybe she’d try harder if you let her be hungry for a day or—’

‘Rapskal! Would you let Heeby just be hungry?’

He kicked, half angrily, half shamed, at the thick layer of forest detritus. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘No, I couldn’t. Not my Heeby. But she’s sweet. Not like Sintara.’

That stung. ‘Sintara’s not so bad!’ She was, really. But that was between her and her dragon. ‘I can’t go with you, Rapskal. I have to go hunting now.’

Rapskal flung up his hands, surrendering. ‘Oh, very well.’ He favoured her with a smile. ‘Tomorrow then. Maybe it will be less rainy. We could go early, and spend the whole day in the city.’

‘Rapskal, I can’t!’ She longed to soar through the morning sky on a dragon’s back. Longed to feel what it was to fly, study just how the dragon did it. ‘I can’t be gone a whole day. I need to hunt for Sintara, every day. Until she’s fed, I can’t do anything else. Can’t patch the roof of our hut, can’t mend my trousers, can’t do anything. She nags me in her thoughts; I feel her hunger. Don’t you remember what that was like?’

She studied his face as he knit his finely-scaled brows. ‘I do,’ he admitted at last. ‘Yes. Well.’ He sighed abruptly. ‘I’ll help you hunt today,’ he offered.

‘And I would thank you for that, and it would help today.’ She well knew that Tats had stalked off without her. There’d be no catching up with him. ‘But it won’t do a thing about Sintara being hungry tomorrow.’

He bit his upper lip and wriggled thoughtfully as if he were a child. ‘I see. Very well. I’ll help you hunt today to feed your lazy dragon. And tomorrow, I’ll think of something so that she can be fed without you spending the whole day on it. Then would you come with me to Kelsingra?’

‘I would. With my most hearty thanks!’

‘Oh, you will be more than thankful at what I wish to show you! And now, let’s hunt!’

‘Get up!’

Selden came awake shaking and disoriented. Usually they let him sleep at this time of day, didn’t they? What time of day was it? The light from a lantern blinded him. He sat up slowly, his arm across his eyes to shelter them. ‘What do you want of me?’ he asked. He knew they wouldn’t answer him. He spoke the words to remind himself that he was a man, not a dumb animal.

But this man did speak to him. ‘Stand up. Turn around and let me take a look at you.’

Selden’s eyes had adjusted a bit. The tent was not completely dark. Daylight leaked in through the patches and seams, but the brightness of the lantern still made his eyes stream tears. Now he knew the man. Not one of those who tended him, who gave him stale bread and scummy water and half-rotted vegetables, nor the one who liked to poke him with a long stick for the amusement of the spectators. No. This was the man who believed he owned Selden. He was a small man with a large, bulbous nose, and he always carried his purse with him, a large bag that he carried over one shoulder as if he could never bear to be parted from his coin for long.

Selden stood up slowly. He had not become any more naked than he had been, but the man’s appraising scrutiny made it feel as if he had. His visitors from earlier in the day were there also. Big Nose turned to a man dressed in the Chalcedean style. ‘There he is. That’s what you’d be buying. Seen enough?’

‘He looks thin.’ The man spoke hesitantly, as if he were trying to bargain but feared to anger the seller. ‘Sickly.’

Big Nose gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘Well, this is the one I’ve got. If you can find a dragon-man in better condition, you’d best go buy him instead.’

There was a moment of silence. The Chalcedean merchant tried again. ‘The man I represent will want proof that he is what you say he is. Give me something to send him, and I’ll advise him to meet your price.’

Big Nose mulled this over for a short time. ‘Like what?’ he asked sullenly.

‘A finger. Or a toe.’ At the outrage on Big Nose’s face, the merchant amended, ‘Or just a joint off one of his fingers. A token. Of good faith in the bargaining. Your price is high.’

‘Yes. It is. And I’m not cutting anything off him that won’t grow back! I cut him, he takes an infection and dies, I’ve lost my investment. And how do I know that one finger isn’t all you really need? No. You want a piece of him, you pay me for it, up front.’

Selden listened and as the full implication of their words sunk into him, he reeled in sick horror. ‘You’re going to sell one of my fingers? This is madness! Look at me! Look me in the face! I’m a human!’

Big Nose turned and glared at him. Their eyes met. ‘You don’t shut up, you’re going to be a bloody human. And you heard me tell him, I’m not cutting anything off you that won’t grow back. So you got nothing to complain about.’

Selden thought he had already experienced the depths of cruelty that these men were capable of. Two cities ago, one of his tenders had rented him for the evening to a curious customer. His mind veered from recalling that and as Big Nose’s grinning assistant held up a black-handled knife, Selden heard a roaring in his ears.

‘It has to be something that proves he is what you say he is,’ the buyer insisted. He crossed his arms on his chest. ‘I’ll pay you ten silvers for it. But then if my master is satisfied and wants to buy him, you have to take ten silvers off your price.’

Big Nose considered it. His assistant cleaned his nails with the tip of the knife.

‘Twenty silvers,’ he countered. ‘Before we cut him.’

The Chalcedean chewed his lower lip. ‘For a piece of flesh, with scales on it, as big as the palm of my hand.’

‘Stop!’ Selden bellowed, but it came out as a shriek. ‘You can’t do this. You can’t!’

‘As big as my two fingers,’ Big Nose stipulated. ‘And the money here in my hand before we begin.’

‘Done,’ said the buyer quickly.

Big Nose spat into the straw and held out his hand. The coins chinked, one after another, into his palm.

Selden backed away as far as his chains would allow him. ‘I’ll fight you!’ he cried. ‘I’m not going to stand here and let you cut me.’

‘As you wish,’ Big Nose replied. He opened his purse and dropped the money in. ‘Give me the knife, Reever. You two get to sit on him while I take a piece off his shoulder.’

Day the 14th of the Hope Moon

Year the 7th of the Independent Alliance of Traders

From Kim, Keeper of the Birds, Cassarick to Trader Finbok, Bingtown

Sent in a doubly sealed messenger tube, with plugs of green and then blue wax. If either seal is missing or damaged, notify me immediately!

Greetings to Trader Finbok.

As you requested, I have continued to inspect shipments from my station. You know the hazards this presents for me, and I think you ought to be more generous in rewarding my efforts. My gleanings have been a bit confusing, but we both know that where there is secrecy, there is profit to be made. While there is no direct word of your son’s wife or on the success or failure of the Tarman expedition, I think that tidings I have sent you may be valuable in ways we cannot yet evaluate. And I remind you that our agreement was that you would pay me for the risks I took as much as the information I gleaned. To put it plainly and at great risk to myself if this message should fall into other hands, if my spying is discovered, I will lose my position as Bird Keeper. If that befalls me, all will want to know for whom I was spying. I think that my promise to keep that information private no matter what befalls me should be worth something to you. Think carefully before you rebuke me again for how paltry my tidings are. A man cannot catch fish when the river is empty.

For this reason, you must speak to a certain bird seller in the city, a man called Sheerup on the street of the meat vendors. He can arrange for me to receive a shipment of birds that will return to him rather than to the Guild cages, ensuring the privacy of our communication. He will then pass on my messages to you. This will not be cheap, but opportunities always go to the man who makes them his.

Convey my greetings to your wife, Sealia. I am sure her continued comfort and well-being as the wife of a wealthy Trader are important to both of you.

Kim